


as his own soul

by plinys



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Period-Typical Homophobia, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:24:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5443211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander is his soulmate. That much is clear.</p><p>But he is not Alexander’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as his own soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [selenedaydreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/selenedaydreams/gifts).



> For Selene who wanted an angsty soulmate swap. Here you go bro, I hope you're happy. Also FYI this fic can mostly be read as gen (and was written as that) but there got some one sided feels happening by the final draft and oops. 
> 
> (Title is stolen from a verse is 1 Samuel 18, because I corrupt everything with my dirty fic-ing hands.)

 

 

They tell him that to have a soulmate is a blessing, that one day the woman who will greet him with the words _‘Pardon me, but are you Aaron Burr, sir_ ’ will be the one to complete his very soul. The one whose heart beats as a twin to his.

Just as Eve’s heart beat as a twin to Adam’s.

Though he does not feel that at the moment. All he feels is pain, an unbearable amount, and a fever that he cannot sweat out – a fever that does not belong to him. The doctors insist that  it is impossible to die from the pain ones soulmate feels but Aaron would object to that, he would write essays arguing the exact opposite if only he could be strong enough to hold a pen once more.

A gasp tears from his lips involuntarily, as the pain spikes through him again.

At ten years old, he imagines that he will feel it, the moment his soulmate dies. That the words along his ribs fading before they can even be spoken to him. At this point he would nearly relish the relief of the pressure, the relief from the pain.

\---

There is a chill that seeps down into his bones, a chill that Aaron cannot shake no matter how many blankets he wraps around his body. He feels as if there is wind blowing even when indoors and he curses his soulmate – for surely _she_ is the cause of these strange sensations his body feels.

Weeks later he will hear of a storm that had torn the Caribbean apart, a hurricane the likes of which had never been seen before.

He’ll know then what those invisible windstorms must have meant, clings to the knowledge that at least now he knows where his soulmate might be. If only he had the means to seek her out.

\---

Hearing those words for the first time was meant to be a momentous occasion. Every time Aaron heard the word ‘ _pardon_ ’ he would instantly be on alert, prepared to meet the one person that was to bring him eternal happiness.

But he had never expected this – this man that stood before him, cheeks flushed and hair windswept. His fingers still holding onto the crook of Aaron’s elbow as he talks about punching the bursar and college courses. Hamilton talks as though he is about to run out of words, and Aaron cannot help but find that a bit charming.

The realization punching him in the gut.

He cannot force himself to say the words _‘I think we might be soulmates_ ’.

Because he remembers his lessons, the ones his grandfather preached, that soulmates were to be an Adam and an _Eve_. There had of course been tales of others; like the famous heroes of the Greeks, soulmates who were not destined to be lovers, but to be brothers.

No, this Hamilton would not be his great love, but perhaps together they would shape the world in other ways. Surely, if God had given him Hamilton’s words than they must mean something.

“Let me buy you a drink.”

\---

Alexander is his soulmate. That much is clear.

But he is not Alexander’s.

The realization stings too much to bear, to see the words that circle Alexander’s wrist, a greeting passed onto him by another – another who shares his letters. He sees them in the dark at night, Laurens pressing a kiss to Alexander’s wrist, where his words shine out in dark clarity.

Aaron reminds himself that he does not want that, he does not want to be the one to take Alexander apart with his hands or with his lips, but he imagines desperately some nights, a world where their soulmate bond went both ways.

When a bullet tears through his shoulder, in the flurry of battle, he contemplates bleeding out. Knowing that there is no one on the other side, feeling the phantom twitch of their soulmate in pain.

No there is no one who will ever claim Aaron as their own.

\---

Alexander is by his bedside when he awakes. The pain from his wound making his head swim as he looks up at the other man, surprised to see concern in the young aides face. His throat is too dry to form proper words, though when he realizes how he must look he could not have found the words even if he tried.

There are bandages covering his shoulder but the rest of his chest lays exposed from the doctor’s work. He knows without looking at the dark letters along his ribs that he used to trace with a sense of hope and wonder will be showing now – that there is no way Alexander coming to check up on him could have missed them.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The question carries such weight and Aaron is not certain he even has the proper answer to that question. Or at least, an answer that will wipe the guilty and pained look from Alexander’s face.

“Laurens is your soulmate,” he eventually says, his voice a mere whisper in their tent. “Not me.”

“That does not mean-“

“Alexander, please leave me. I need rest to recover.”

There’s a feather light touch, a ghosting of fingers upon the words on his side. The feeling sends a rush through him and Aaron quiet forgets how to breathe until Alexander does remove his hands back to his side.

“Yes, sir, rest will do you well.”

\---

He loves Theodosia, she who has lost her soulmate years before. Who married not for love but for circumstance, who smiles at him as though he completes her world.

For her, he could pretend that their love was enough – that there was not a small part of him that yearned for the company of the one man whose soul completed his own.

He tells her he loves her more than life itself, and he almost believes himself.

Though he cannot help but think that the best part of loving her comes from the small smile that Alexander shoots him when he hears the news of the wedding. Before teasing, “And you didn’t even invite _me_.”

“We eloped.”

“I know but, I’m _different_.”

\---

Theodosia had described to him what it felt like, to feel her soulmate die. The break in their mental link, the burst of pain so strong that it seemed unimaginable for anything to become more painful, before a moment of brief silence of emptiness, at the eye of the hurricane.

What followed was sadness that even now years later he could never properly save her from.

He is writing when he feels it, his legal briefs forgotten in an instant as a burst of pain rips through him. It’s faded, not as strong as the times he has felt Alexander injured before, but it’s there just to the side of his heart. Like a bullet tearing through him and then _nothing_.

His gasp of pain is so loud that it rouses Theodosia from a room away. It is only her hands on him soothing him, helping to hold him onto the present that keeps him grounded in the absence of the slight noise and pressure that in the back of his mind that undoubtable belonged to his soul bond with Hamilton.

“What is it, love,” she asks.

“I – I need to check on Alexander, he –,” his voice as never broke like this before, but the emptiness was changing, into a gulf of sadness and pain, tearing at his insides suffocating him.

Surely this must have been what Theodosia described to him.

He is not entirely certain how he pushes himself through the motions, how he is moves despite the pain, but when he finds himself standing outside of the Hamiltons’ home, his hand hovering just over the edge of the wood.

In the end he doesn’t need to knock, the door thrown open before he can make a decision either way, and Eliza – Alexander’s beautiful wife who as rumor has it suffers a fate similar to his own – with tears in her eyes, seems to receive a small bit of hope in light of his presence.

She must know why he is here.

Vaguely he wonders when Alexander told her, about the man that belonged to him but that he could not belong to. Though there is a time for those thoughts later.

“He’s in his study. He’s fine. Not fine but,” Eliza trails off.

If Alexander is fine then the pain doesn’t make sense. The feeling of loss, loss of part of his soul, his very essence, there’s no way it could have meant anything else, unless – “Laurens.”

Eliza’s slow nod is all the answer he needs.

\---

He’s exhausted, a bone deep tired that sinks into his bones until he cannot go on. Though even as he tries to find his rest it refuses to come. Instead he stares at the wall, before a restless energy – energy that does not belong to him – begins to fill his body. He bounces on his toes in an attempt to relieve it when he finally slips from his bed, careful not to disturb his wife.

There’s no way to release the energy, no way for _Aaron_ to do so.

In the end he’s not even surprised, when after venturing down the street he finds Alexander still at work in the law offices, his pen scratching against the paper as another candle burns nearly out.

He must not have been quiet on his way up, for as soon as he enters the room Alexander speaks up. “Just let me finish this.”

“No.”

“Burr, please.”

“I swear one day you will be the death of me.”

“You say that like it’s such a bad thing.”

Hamilton would write himself into an early grave if he was given the chance. Perhaps that is even what he thinks he wants on occasion but Aaron cannot deal with it. Too many nights lately he has been kept up with anxiety or anguish.

At first he had been willing to let it slide – he had felt the pain at the loss of Laurens life nearly as strongly as Alexander had due to their bond – but as time had passed…

“Now,” is all he says, fingers snuffing out the flame of the candle so that the room is only illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the windows.

Alexander lets out a noise of frustration, but this time he gives in letting Aaron pull him from his work. Not to home – the walk suddenly seeming too far, but to a small couch set up in the office for occasions such as these.

It’s not large enough for two men, so as he pulls Alexander down with him, they are cramped together, bodies not fitting easily together as they ought to. Still, it does the trick, and slowly he feels the blessed relief of sleep seep into his bones.

\---

He is not certain how it comes up. Drinks perhaps, long political debates, but he can see the words standing out sharp against Jefferson’s collarbone as he undoes his necktie.

“Platonic soulmates,” Madison explains. “It’s why we work so well together.”

Aaron cannot help but feel envious of the easy bond his companions have. Perhaps that is why with just a hint too much of liquor on his lips, he spills his secrets to them without a second thought.

\---

It wakes him in the middle of the night, a burning feeling – desire mixed with pain. He had felt this before, during the war, long after all others had gone to sleep. He would be roused from his slumber by the desire burning deep within him desire that was not his home.

Pleasure was not normally a feeling felt along his soulmate bond, no pain and exhaustion were the more usually, and even now the pleasure was mixed with an undercurrent of guilt that made his stomach churn.

Theodosia senses his disturbance, her hand finding his arm in the darkness, quietly questioning, “My love, is it-”

He silences her question with a passionate kiss, a desperate kiss, because he needs to find a way to release the desires building up inside of him. He needs to rid the itch from his skin, to make love to someone, as he knows somewhere his soulmate must be doing.

If the moans she lets out seem a bit more poetic that night who is to say.

\---

“You changed parties to run against my father in law.”

The words come out as an accusation. Sharp like betrayal, the expression on Alexander’s face matching his tone.

“I changed parties to seize an opportunity I saw,” he corrects, but Alexander seems not to hear him, so caught up in his rage over something that is simply a disagreement of politics. They have had these disagreements before. He’s long since used to Alexander – used to his _soulmate_ – accusing him of feeling nothing, of never choosing a side.

“Tell me this isn’t,” Alexander starts then stops, shaking his head ever so slightly.

“This isn’t what?”

“I know you were jealous of,” he trails off then for a moment, “But if you are doing this because you are jealous of Eliza then-“

“Not everything is about _you_ ,” Aaron snaps back because there is fire in his veins. That Alexander would even dare to voice that accusation to accuse him of some so low. “Just because God seems to think that he has a plan for me, that watching out for you is somehow part my destiny, does not mean that every action I do is as a direct result of your existence. For once I do something for _me_.”

“For _once_ ,” Alexander’s voice rises now. “You do more than just this for yourself.”

The barbs are cruel and low, because they know just how to hurt each other. The pain Aaron feels so sharply that he is not sure whether it is Alexander’s or his own anymore.

“I never wanted to be your soulmate.”

The words have the desired effect. Alexander stares at him for a moment, the color draining from his face, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. He doesn’t look angry anymore, instead there is sadness lining his features.

Eventually, when he does speak it is with a dry humorless voice. “I did. I wanted for so long to be yours, to be able to return your bond.”

\---

They stop talking after that, barely can stand to be in the same room. He tries not to feel it, the thinly buried rage and disgust that churns inside of him each time they have to share the same space. Somewhere, some traitorous part of Aaron remembers that that unpleasant feeling is not his own, but projected to him by Hamilton at the sight of him.

He throws up in a piss poor attempt to make the feeling go away after one senate meeting. His chest heaving through the affect effects, eyes watering.

If this what it feels like to have a soulmate that hates him then he would rather not have one at all.

Later that night he scrubs at the words, the words that he cannot get rid of no matter how hard he tries. There remains Hamilton’s brand upon him.

\---

Theodosia dies.

He feels numb, cries more nights than he would dare to admit, longs for something – for someone – that had no way of knowing of his pain, no way of understanding his need for comfort. Though even if he had Aaron doubts the other man would have come.

It takes a week before a letter arrives, his wife’s body cold and in the ground, his daughter having cried so much that there were simply no tears left for her to shed. That is when the letter arrives from one _A. Ham_.

The words are hollow, condolences that he doesn’t want nor need. Condolences that he’s not even certain Hamilton meant, the letter betrays a sense of duty, duty to an empty bond, to a former friend in morning.

None of it makes him feel any better.

\---

Hamilton looks at him with something akin to betray in his eyes. Aaron wonders what it feels like, to see a person who God wants on his side, standing opposite willing to end his political career in one sweeping motion.

Aaron tells himself that it’s the right thing to do. That he’s doing what is best for the nation, best for his political allies, but then Hamilton looks at him with _those eyes_ and suddenly he’s not so sure anymore. Perhaps they did go too far? Political scandal was one thing, but an affair-

Vaguely he wonders if this was what he felt on those nights years ago, a low burning in the middle of the night, guilt and desire crashing into each other. He doesn’t dare ask.

“Promise me you won’t use this the next time we go toe to toe.”

He wants to make that promise, a burning urge inside of his wants to give into Hamilton’s words to

\---

His daughter has so many questions; questions he cannot answer, no matter how hard he tries. She dreams of happiness, that the words written upon her arm ‘ _May I have this dance_?’ Will one day lead her to a happily ever after.

He wants nothing more than that, to push all her worries away.

When Alston appears, he thinks they’ve got it right. The words ‘ _The pleasure would be all mine’_ scrawled up his thigh, he shows the words to Aaron with a sense of pride, proof that he and Theodosia are soulmates. It feels childish to be envious of his own daughter, who smiles like she’s the happiest person in the world on her wedding day, telling the word that God has blessed her with this husband with this match.

Neither of them remember a child years ago, whose fingers had been coated with sugar when he’d asked the child of his father’s law partner to dance.

Not months after the wedding, when Aaron receives a letter from his daughter, describing an unbearable pain that had seemed to come from nowhere; asking him if this is what it had been like when her mother had died.

He has no way to explain to her what that truly means. That the only time he’d ever felt that way was when his soulmate lost the one person they had truly loved, but he puts a pen to the paper and resolves to try.

The second letter he writes is to Hamilton, simply and clean, it reads: _In spite of our differences, I am sorry for you loss_.

\---

“Even your soulmate doesn’t want you to be president.”

The words are said like a joke, because everything Jefferson says is a _fucking_ joke. But the joke isn’t funny anymore, because it stings more than it should. The truth is in his every word.

Even his own _soulmate_ didn’t want him to be president.

And wasn’t that the cause of it all, the one thing that had been holding him back since he was a child, tracing letters in messy handwriting upon his skin.

 _Alexander Hamilton_.

God may have thought they were destined for each other but even sometimes God made mistakes. There was no way that he should be tied to that man, that Hamilton’s indifference should be the ruin of everything that he had worked for, everything he’d done.

“Weehawken. Dawn. Guns drawn.”

\---

Distantly he registers the countdown. The eyes on him, and he wonders for the first time if this is what they were destined for.

Not the kind that loved each other, that would make each other complete, but two men, who were always destined for this. Destined to stand across from each other with guns drawn.

He had once thought it would be Hamilton that would kill him, his tendency to push himself too much, to put himself in danger – that it would one day spill over their bond, but now…

How wrong he had gotten it all.

“Wait!” But even as the word escapes his lips, he knows it’s too late. He can feel the split second, the bullet, _his bullet_ rips through his side. Pain that makes him double over untouched, eyes drawn to a man paces away. To his soulmate, who in spite of everything, remains standing as blood blossoms over the cloth of his coat.

Hands hold him back from offering final comforts, from trying to vain to take the pain away.

There were stories. Hymns he’d heard of a child of men like David and Jonathan. Epic poems studied in school telling of Achilles and his Patroclus.  Men whose bond had been more than brotherhood, whose bond at been of the soul. Who felt death not once but twice.

But none of them had even been foolish enough to strike the final blow.

He envies them for that.  

 


End file.
